COLUMN: Where does the transfer market leave the little guys?

Since its inception in 2002, the transfer window has always a frenzy of clamour and hyperbole, but while the big boys enjoy their carnival, are the little guys left playing a rigged game for a prize that can never be theirs?

This year's summer transfer window brought about the most bombastic boasting we have ever seen as over one billion (yes, billion) pounds was spent on the likes of John Stones and Granit Xhaka, as well as Paul Pogba, who Manchester United broke the transfer record for to bring him to the club for £89 million.

Sky Sports News, like they do, revelled in the news like a particularly eventful evening of Comic Relief as "the transfer totaliser ticked over one billion pounds" and then proceeded to quiz their esteemed panel on how and why this has just happened with no apparent sense of irony or self-awareness.

In total, 13 of the 20 Premier League clubs broke their transfer record with even newly-promoted Burnley and Hull spending just over £23 million between them on their big buys of Jeff Hendrick and Ryan Mason respectively.

Newcastle United and Aston Villa, too, both relegated from the holy land of the Premier League, spent and made crazy amounts of cash. The Magpies earned £86 million from outgoings and splashed out £57 million on fresh faces while Villa parted with over £59 million, including a combined £27 million on strikers Ross McCormack and Jonathan Kodjia.

All well and good for them, but where does this leave the clubs who are yet to grace the top-flight in its modern form, or simply, have never been there at all?

Take a club like, I don't know, Swindon Town (picked entirely at random). 

The Wiltshire outfit have not played in the Premier League since their one-and-only season of 1993-94, where they conceded over 100 goals and have since faded into relative obscurity without the safety net of the now fabled parachute payment which rewards failure.

After losing star striker Nicky Ajose, Town fans spent much of their summer posting on forums asking rhetorical questions to the chairman where the replacements were and calling for Lee Power to "spend some [expletive] money!".

Town's model has been called "sustainable" by their chairman - "sustainable" is a word that, rightly or wrongly, translates as "penny-pinching" to some, especially in this day and age and when near-neighbours Oxford are busy spending more money on wages, but building up millions of debt in the process while Swindon are steady Eddies. 

On a more general sense, though, the clubs that make up Leagues One and Two, specifically, have an uphill struggle to get to the upper echelon of the game, and increasingly, are getting blown out of the water by second tier sides.

Parachute payments were only introduced in the 2013-14 season, but already three of the six relegated Premier League clubs (Hull, Norwich and Burnley) have gone down and got back up again, and with the aforementioned spending of Newcastle and Aston Villa, that number looks like it might go up this season and carry on in the not-too-distant future, leaving everyone else by the wayside.

There are many reasons people go to the football. They go to the football for entertainment and they go to the football for joy, people will even go to the football when they expect sadness but those 90 minutes take them away from everything at home.

But most of all, people go to the football for hope, the hope that their local club can one day be the best in the land, but as that dream continues to ebb away, where is all the hope going?